A federal judge in Maryland on Monday dismissed a challenge to President Trump's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

"This Court does not like the outcome of this case, but is constrained by its constitutionally limited role to the result that it has reached," Judge Roger Titus said in his opinion. "Hopefully, the Congress and the President will finally get their job done."

"An overwhelming percentage of Americans support protections for 'Dreamers,' yet it is not the province of the judiciary to provide legislative or executive actions when those entrusted with those responsibilities fail to act," Titus continued.

The Obama-era program permits immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children to stay in the country without fear of deportation.

A federal judge in Maryland on Monday dismissed a challenge to President Trump's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

"This Court does not like the outcome of this case, but is constrained by its constitutionally limited role to the result that it has reached," Judge Roger Titus said in his opinion. "Hopefully, the Congress and the President will finally get their job done."

"An overwhelming percentage of Americans support protections for 'Dreamers,' yet it is not the province of the judiciary to provide legislative or executive actions when those entrusted with those responsibilities fail to act," Titus continued.

The Obama-era program permits immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children to stay in the country without fear of deportation.

Democratic leaders are backing off of their demand that "Dreamer" protections be a part of the 2018 budget negotiations.

While House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders had hinged their support for last month’s budget caps deal on a commitment from Republicans to consider legislation salvaging the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, they’ve signaled they won’t hold a similar line heading into next week’s expected vote on an omnibus spending bill.

The apparent change in strategy has angered immigrant rights advocates in and out of Congress, who want the minority Democrats to use their rare leverage on the omnibus government funding package — among the last must-pass bills of the year — to secure protections for the hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who came to the country illegally as children.

“We need a budget or spending measure that includes the Dream Act. Punto,” Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) said last week.

Democratic leaders have kept the rhetorical heat on Republicans to stage a DACA vote, using every opportunity to press Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to bring the issue to the floor. But after Senate Democrats were blamed for a brief government shutdown over DACA in January — and with Republicans likely needing scores of Democratic votes to pass the omnibus — House leaders are not insisting that such a commitment accompany the 2018 spending package.

Instead, Democratic leaders want appropriators in both parties to drop all contentious “riders” for the sake of easing passage of the omnibus and preventing a government shutdown ahead of March 23, when funding expires.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pressure grew in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday to debate legislation protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation, in a challenge to President Donald Trump, who has declared as “dead” an existing program allowing them to legally study and work in the United States.

A bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers scheduled a press conference on Wednesday to discuss their plans to force debate in the full House on a few different proposals for helping the estimated 800,000 immigrants.

They are expected to announce that they have more than 218 House members on board with moving ahead with a bipartisan bill.

That is the minimum number needed in the 435-member House to pass bills.

For years, Republicans have been deeply divided on immigration legislation, despite polling that shows a significant majority of voters want to help young immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally through no fault of their own.

A House Democratic aide with knowledge of the maneuverings said an announcement of the supporters was aimed at pressuring House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, to move to either bring such legislation to the House floor or to intensify high-level negotiations on crafting a new compromise bill.

In the biggest setback yet for the Trump administration in its attempt to end a program that shields some undocumented young adults from deportation, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the protections must stay in place and that the government must resume accepting new applications.

Judge John D. Bates of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia said that the administration’s decision to terminate the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, was based on the “virtually unexplained” grounds that the program was “unlawful.”

The judge stayed his decision for 90 days and gave the Department of Homeland Security, which administers the program, the opportunity to better explain its reasoning for canceling it. If the department fails to do so, it “must accept and process new as well as renewal DACA applications,” Judge Bates said in the decision.

The ruling was the third in recent months against the Trump administration’s rollback of DACA. Federal judges in Brooklyn and in San Francisco each issued injunctions ordering that the program remain in place. But neither of those decisions required the government to accept new applications.

Texas and six other states filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the federal government seeking to end the Obama-era program that protects hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children.

* * *

The lawsuit asks for all DACA permits to be rescinded or the administration to be blocked from issuing or renewing new requests. Specifically, it is meant to challenge "whether the 2012 executive action unilaterally creating DACA was itself lawful," the suit states.

The legal move comes just one week after a federal judge in Washington ordered the administration to continue the program.

* * *

Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia have also signed onto the suit, filed in the Southern District of Texas.

The complaint, and, yes, it was in the Brownsville Division. No doubt an attempt to get in front of Hanen again.

Texas and six other states filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the federal government seeking to end the Obama-era program that protects hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children.

Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia have also signed onto the suit, filed in the Southern District of Texas.

The complaint, and, yes, it was in the Brownsville Division. No doubt an attempt to get in front of Hanen again.

Our attorney general is the daughter of a former Special Education teacher who would not provide state and federally required services to students in need. My clients got fired for reporting it to state regulators who issued a report citing the district's violations. We sued the district and won. The attorney general has about as much regard for human rights as her mother did.

Centrist Reps. Carlos Curbelo (Fla.), Jeff Denham (Calif.) and Will Hurd (Texas), all Republicans facing tough reelection races, introduced a discharge petition on Wednesday morning to trigger a series of immigration votes. Discharge petitions are traditionally seen as a serious affront to leadership, making members reluctant to sign on.

Yet the effort quickly caught fire, gaining new supporters throughout the day. By press time, at least 17 GOP lawmakers had endorsed the petition, just eight short of the 25 Republican votes that would be needed if every Democrat also backed it.

Facing the prospect of a potentially divisive floor debate ahead of the midterm elections, GOP leaders on Wednesday afternoon made a public plea for members to abandon the petition, calling it the wrong approach.

“I don’t believe in discharge petitions. You’re turning the floor over. I think it’s better to use the legislative process,” Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who controls what bills come to the House floor, told reporters.

Republicans really aren't good about using the legislative process.

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will be the first federal appeals court to hear arguments about President Donald Trump's decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

A federal judge in San Francisco in January blocked the Trump administration's decision to end DACA, reinstating the program in a decision that applied nationwide.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup rejected the argument that President Barack Obama exceeded his power in implementing DACA and said the Trump administration failed to consider the disruption that ending the program would cause.

The administration has been critical of the 9th Circuit and took the unusual step of trying to sidestep the appeals court and have the California DACA cases heard directly by the Supreme Court.

Lawmakers who support DACA say they 'already have the votes' to force House debate

Washington (CNN)An effort to force a House vote on immigration didn't pick up any new supporters Tuesday night, but its backers say they are already sure it will reach enough signatures to hit the floor.

"We are extremely confident we already have the votes," Republican Rep. Jeff Denham of California said as he walked onto the House floor for the first votes of the week, which was the first opportunity lawmakers had to sign the measure since last week. ...

If the petition can pick up 25 Republican signatures and those of every Democrat in the House, leadership would be forced to call four bills to the floor that address DACA. It currently has support from 18 Republicans and one Democrat, who signed earlier than the rest of her party last week because she expected to be out all of this week. The petition's backers still expect to hit the number of signatures this week.

Denham's rule would provide for debate and votes on four different immigration-related bills. One would be a bipartisan compromise, one would be a hardline bill supported by conservatives, one would be a Democratic bill to authorize just a version of the DACA program into law and one is completely up to House Speaker Paul Ryan -- leaving him free to choose any bill.

Leadership, however, is whipping against the measure, asking moderates to not sign it and emphasizing the importance of House Republicans keeping control of legislation and solving the problem on their terms, according to a Republican leadership aide.

A small group of bipartisan senators has been holding back-channel talks in the hopes of reviving a deal. But it’s a tall order.

Cory Gardner, the leader of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, delivered an urgent message to President Donald Trump in a telephone conversation earlier this month: Congress and the White House need to act pronto on immigration reform.

“The sweet spot for getting an immigration deal remains now. The closer we get to the election and certainly post-election, the more difficult it will be,” the Colorado Republican recounted telling the president. “If we wait longer, the more difficult it becomes. They’ll blame it on both parties at that point.”

A group of senators in both parties is beginning to restart back-channel talks across the aisle and with the White House in hopes that the chamber will be ready to act if the House or the courts throw the issue back to the Senate this summer. But the Senate isn’t ready to take up the issue after a thoroughly unproductive immigration debate in February, followed by months of radio silence.

And lawmakers are growing more and more worried the upper chamber could be blindsided by a call to action later this year.

The House, meanwhile, has become a hotbed of immigration debate — and it’s preparing to take up one or several Republican bills in June. But even if the GOP is able to resolve its intense disagreements and pass something, the Senate is very unlikely to accept it, according to interviews with nearly a dozen senators of both parties. Their opposition extends from a conservative bill written by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). to a more moderate one pushed by centrist House Republicans.

Two Democratic holdouts have signaled their support for an immigration vote on the House floor, bringing supporters within three signatures of the needed 218 to trigger a showdown over the fate of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers.

Texas Democratic Reps. Filemon Vela and Vicente Gonzalez announced on Tuesday they will sign onto a discharge petition being circulated by backers of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era initiative canceled by President Donald Trump last year.

"By signing this discharge petition, I do so with the intent of giving 800,000 young people — young Americans — peace of mind and the ability to remain in the only country they call home," Gonzalez and Vela said in a joint statement.

Moderate Republicans who support DACA, led by Reps. Carlos Curbelo (Fla.), Will Hurd (Texas) and Jeff Denham (Calif.), unveiled a discharge petition last month that would set up floor votes on four immigration proposals. Under the procedural maneuver, the plan with the most votes over 218 would pass.

With nearly two dozen Republicans having already signed onto the petition — in a direct challenge to Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — House GOP leaders have been scrambling behind the scenes to prevent more of their rank-and-file members from backing the initiative.

'We've Set A Deadline': Moderate R's Demand DACA Deal By Tuesday, Or Else

The moderate Republicans leading the charge for a last-ditch agreement for young undocumented immigrants said GOP leaders have until Tuesday to find a deal that can placate the conference, or they’ll join forces with Democrats to force a floor vote on a bill along the lines of the DREAM Act.

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA), one of the moderates’ leaders in ongoing negotiations, told TPM Thursday afternoon that he thought the rough outlines of a pact were emerging. But Denham said the deal itself and actual legislative text needed to be finalized by Tuesday and a guaranteed time for a floor vote, or else they would join with Democrats to force a floor vote on a bipartisan fix to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shielded immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.

“We’ve set a deadline,” he told TPM. “We’re not pulling back. We have the signatures, we have the people ready to go down and sign, and we’ve been working with leadership to give them enough time to put a bill together and to bring this in front of our conference.”

Denham has helped lead the charge for a discharge petition that would force an open floor debate on how to reinstate DACA. That discharge petition has 215 supporters in the House, just three short of a majority that would force the vote, and Denham has promised he has the votes to get it there if necessary. Tuesday is the deadline to file the discharge petition for it to be counted in June and guarantee a House vote before the August recess.

House GOP leaders defeat effort by moderates to force a vote on bipartisan legislation for 'Dreamers'

An effort by moderate Republicans to force votes on a bipartisan immigration bill failed in the House on Tuesday, with members agreeing instead to vote on legislation that would guarantee funds for President Trump’s proposed border wall.

The agreement meant defeat, at least for now, for an effort led by Rep. Jeff Denham of Turlock and other GOP moderates to use a rare parliamentary maneuver known as a discharge petition to force the House to vote on the bipartisan immigration plan, and three other bills, over the objections of party leaders.

The dissident Republicans, frustrated by Congress’ failure to resolve the legal status of “Dreamers” — people brought to the U.S. illegally as children — had combined with the chamber’s Democrats to try to force a vote on a plan that would offer the young immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

Defeat of the effort greatly reduces the chances — already slim — that Congress could pass any form of Dreamer legislation before this year’s midterm election. ...

Tuesday evening, with the petition stuck at 216 signatures, the moderates backed down, accepting a proposal by Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to put aside their effort and instead have the House debate two bills next week — both of which have only Republican support.

House Democrats are hammering GOP leaders for scuttling the bipartisan effort to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.

“If Republicans plan to use Dreamers as a way to advance @realDonaldTrump⁩’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant agenda, they will get a fight from House Democrats,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted late Tuesday. ...

Democrats wasted no time accusing Republican leaders of undermining the DACA debate to protect GOP lawmakers from taking tough votes — a cynical strategy, the Democrats charge, that will leave the Dreamers in limbo for months or years to come.

“Instead of allowing the House to work its will and vote on a bipartisan compromise bill to end these families’ uncertainty Speaker Ryan continues to dissemble and delay,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the Democratic whip, said in a statement.

“This is a pretend attempt to appear that he is addressing the DACA crisis when he is not.”

New GOP immigration bill would prevent separation of children and parents at border

WASHINGTON — The compromise House GOP immigration bill will include a provision that children will not be separated from their parents at the border.

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., one of the moderate Republicans involved in negotiations over the legislation, said the provision will be part of the yet-to-be-written text of the measure. A senior GOP aide confirmed the provision to NBC and said Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., briefed House Republicans last week that it would be included in any bill that's considered.

In addition to protecting the 1.8 million Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, the compromise bill would also eliminate the diversity lottery and include $25 billion for border security, Denham told reporters Wednesday. He said leadership is committed to completing the text of the bill this week. ...

"I said before, the last thing I want to do is bring a bill out of here that I know the president won’t support," Ryan said at a weekly leadership press conference. "Well, we have been working hand in glove with the administration on this to make sure we are bringing a bill that represents the president’s four pillars so that we can come together."

The speaker told House Republicans on Wednesday morning that he had spoken to President Donald Trump about the plan, and that the president was excited about it, according a person inside the House GOP conference meeting.

"It will protect all Dreamers — those that signed up for DACA, those that did not but were eligible, as well as those that have been aged in," Denham told reporters Wednesday, after House Republicans met behind closed doors at the Capitol Hill Club.

House Republicans consider allowing immigrant children to be detained alongside their parents

House Republican leaders on Thursday circulated a proposal to end the Trump administration’s practice of separating immigrant children from their families when they are apprehended at the border — one that would, in effect, allow children to be detained alongside their parents.

The provision is included in a “discussion draft” of broader GOP legislation aimed at striking a compromise between conservative and moderate Republicans on immigration by balancing relief for young undocumented immigrants, billions of dollars for President Trump’s border wall and changes to legal immigration programs.

But the family separations have emerged as an exigent issue after Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared a “zero tolerance” policy in April toward adults who attempt to cross the border illegally. The Trump administration has interpreted existing laws and court decisions to require the adults to be incarcerated and the children to be separated from their parents.

That policy has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups, clergy and lawmakers across the political spectrum — including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

“We don’t want kids to be separated from their parents,” Ryan told reporters Thursday, calling for a legislative fix.